Seeks election feedback from around the state

Secretary of State Scott Gessler, third from left, sat at a table with Logan County residents Monday morning to get feedback on the November 2012 election.
(David Martinez/Journal-Advocate)

STERLING -- Far from the ethics complaints and controversies found closer to Denver, Secretary of State Scott Gessler found a more comfortable crowd at the Logan County Courthouse Monday morning.

He made Sterling his sixth stop on an election integrity listening tour across the state, aimed at "looking for citizen feedback on the recent election and soliciting changes or improvements that can be made for future elections," according to a news release.

"At hearings in Denver, you get the usual suspects," Gessler said, "people who are paid to be angry."

The handful of attendants focused mostly on money-saving and voter ID issues during the hour-long talk around a table in the Logan County Commissioners' meeting room, as well as what Gessler thought would and wouldn't be addressed in the current state legislature.

He told the group one of the issues his office would look at is voter registration drives, which create issues with their lack of regulation.

Logan County Clerk and Recorder Pam Bacon said she needed to handle one particular case in which a woman contacted her "irate" because a partisan voter registration drive sent out a notice that looked like it was sent by the Clerk and Recorder's Office.

The office will also work toward a universal voting system to cut down complications. One specific tool Gessler used as an example was the office's website for statewide voting results, which was in place for the November election but would need further funding to implement full time.

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But he also said he was in favor of using photo IDs for voting, and was opposed to mandatory mail-in ballots --two issues he didn't see getting much discussion time from the legislature.

While Gessler noted that about 70 percent of Colorado voters voted by mail, the process costs money since some districts use centers for collections, and it depends on the U.S. Postal Service.

It also creates a large return rate for ballots that can't be delivered, as well as higher incidences of signatures that don't match.

Bacon said later that the signature identification was a good safeguard and that her and other offices would "come down like a dog" to make sure the signatures match.

Gessler said that also pointed out the issue that signature rejection rates were "huge" for some counties and low in others.

Mail-in ballots also brought to light the issue of roll updates. Gessler said cities and counties should be sending out mail verifying people were living where they said they were, but that 10 counties had more registered voters than number of people.

Bacon said one of the issues was that people were getting notices, but weren't changing their information.

"We'll send four, five letters. In the bigger cities, they have way more volume. There's no way they can send five letters," Bacon said. "They're getting them. They're just not changing their stuff.

Online registration was a big help, the group agreed, though Bacon said the deadline confused people.

"We spent $850,000 telling people about the deadline," Gessler said. "Still, 17 people registered at 11:59 at the deadline."

He added that about 160,000 people registered to vote on Oct. 9 -- the last day.

On the brighter side, Colorado is part of two separate systems meant to inform the state when citizens change locations or die in other states, limiting confusion come registration time.

Bacon said a lot of people were also confused by the number of options, but said the mail-in situation now is better than it was.

"You used to need to have a reason (for a mail-in ballot), which was horrifying because people didn't want to have to explain it," she laughed. "I had to explain, 'I don't' want to get into your business, I just have to mark it on the form."

Still, she said the number have mail-ins substantially cut down on the number of voter locations in the county that received more than 100 people.

It's hard to justify the cost of all of those voting locations after transporting staff and equipment, she said, if a location only serves 80 voters.

Gessler said it gets incredibly complicated.

"We probably have the most complex elections in the country," Gessler said. "You can vote on election day, by absentee ballot and early voting, and if you look statewide at the number of elections systems we have.

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